Massachusetts’ 2018 MCAS Scores Are In

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“Boston, Massachussetts, United States of America aa August 21th 2012:School bus in State Street, Boston, Massachussetts, USA.”

Four schools, including one in Boston, will no longer be considered “underperforming” according to the state’s standards, officials announced on Thursday along with the release of Massachusetts’ MCAS scores for 2018.

John Winthrop Elementary School in Boston will be among four schools taken off the state’s list of underperforming schools. No new schools will be added to that list, which currently includes more than 200 schools that will continue to receive state assistance.

This was the second year of what the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education calls its “next-generation” version of the test among students in grades 3-8. High school students continued to take an older version of the exam.

Schools this year were also assessed on a brand-new accountability system that tracks progress. Fifty-two schools were celebrated as having reached “high achievement” via that evaluation.

You can find the full district-by-district break-down here and here, but officials caution that the new system makes assessing change a little more difficult. Scores dropped significantly last year, during the rollout of the next-generation test.

“It’s hard to find trends because it’s so new, the system, and you can’t compare it to the old system,” Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley told reporters on a conference call, according to the State House News Service. “To underscore this point, I have decided to name no new underperforming schools or districts this year. I think the schools and districts need time to breathe and we need time to assess this system in a deep way.”